The prospects for the future could hardly be worse for the anniversary.

On Friday, the Evangelical Church of Hesse and Nassau (EKHN) celebrates its founding 75 years ago - at a time when more and more members are turning away from it and leaving the church.

The decline seems unstoppable: in 2021 alone, the EKHN lost three percent of its believers, and currently has around 1.4 million members.

In 1997, when the 50th anniversary was celebrated, it was just under two million.

With the members, the financial means also decrease, the income collapses.

By 2030, the budget of the EKHN is likely to shrink by 20 percent - and make iron savings unavoidable.

It is estimated that every third pastorate will have to be eliminated by then.

A look back at history could give the Church courage in this problematic situation.

When, in autumn 1947, 116 delegates from Nassau, Hesse and Frankfurt unanimously confirmed the merger of the evangelical church in the area of ​​the former state church of Nassau-Hessen in the Burgkirche in Friedberg, the situation was even more difficult, one could say: catastrophic.

After National Socialism and the war, the churches, like the whole country, suffered both materially and spiritually.

No more leader principle

Behind the new EKHN lay the Nazi dictatorship with its church struggle, in which the "German Christians" advocated adaptation to the National Socialist regime, while the members of the "Confessing Church" fought for independence and against the church's conformity.

“What now?” was the question in the fall of 1947. The delegates in Friedberg had no reason to be too optimistic.

But everyone knew that they had to learn from the mistakes of the past.

One of these mistakes was the leader principle imposed by the National Socialists, but desired by some, which shaped the constitution of the predecessor church, the Evangelische Landeskirche Nassau-Hessen founded in November 1933.

Since the mid-1920s, consideration had been given to merging the then five state churches in what is now Hesse.

Shortly after Hitler came to power, the three southern churches (Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau, Frankfurt) actually joined forces under pressure from the regime.

With Ernst Ludwig Dietrich as state bishop, however, a representative of the "German Christians" came to the top, under whom an "Aryan paragraph" was introduced in 1934: People of Jewish descent were no longer allowed to become pastors or hold any office in the church administration.

In the end, a Nazi courtier named Paul Kipper ruled over the regional church with “sole authority”.

But not all members wanted to accept this conformity.

The opponents of a complete adaptation to the Nazi regime gathered in the "Confessing Church", which had emerged from the "Pfarrernotbund" of Martin Niemöller, who worked in Berlin-Dahlem.

Those congregations and pastors who fought this “church fight” against their pro-Nazi co-religionists saved the honor of the Evangelical Church in Hesse and Nassau, so to speak.